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58. It was not called a new invention, but an improvement. Indeed, it was in the essential part founded on the same principle as Baron Schilling's, namely the deflection of needles by multipliers. Professor Wheatstone had, as was to have been expected from such a philosopher, greatly improved the application; the needles were placed in a vertical instead of the horizontal position and their motion was limited by stops. At first he made an instrument with five such upright astatic needles, but this did not come into use, whereas telegraphs with two needles, and also with one needle, were adopted along the various lines.

Such needle instruments are, up to the present day, employed in Great Britain. At the principal telegraph station, in London, there are now not less than thirty double, and four single needle instruments in use.

About a week before the above-mentioned first and perfectly successful trial of telegraphing by Cooke and Wheatstone in England, Steinheil, at Munich, had completed the junction of his house in the Lerchenstrasse with